Quimby national park effort featured in new video

John Clarke Russ | BDN

John Clarke Russ | BDN

Kathy Johnson (left) North Woods Project Director for the Natural Resources Council of Maine talks with Roxanne Quimby before Thursday evening's National Park Service feasibility study meeting at Schenck High School in East Millinocket.

EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — Those who want the National Park Service to study the feasibility of environmentalist Roxanne Quimby’s proposed national park have a new tool: An approximately 15-minute video illustrating the land Quimby hopes to give to the park service in 2016.

A $40 million endowment Quimby would provide, including $20 million she hopes to raise with a national campaign, will cover park maintenance and operation costs, she has said.

The video lacks any detailed representation of park opponents or their views that a national park would threaten the Katahdin region forest products industries or represent an unwanted and harmful federal encroachment onto state and local authority.

The video contains mostly aerial views of the East Branch of the Penobscot River, including the Oxbow, Grand Pitch, Haskell Deadwater, Trout Brook Mountain and the international Appalachian Trail that runs through Quimby’s land.

As narrator of the section illustrating the land, LeVasseur said he hoped people would agree that the imagery shows that the land is suitable for a national park.

“If in fact a national park were to be established, it would be a huge economic boon to the Katahdin region,” LeVasseur said in the video.

But that boon would probably not come in 2016, Quimby has said. She has estimated that it would take several years for the park to draw traffic commensurate to that of Acadia National Park — if the National Park Service actually does a feasibility study and finds the land suitable material.

A park service feasibility study would take years and cost the government about $250,000. Salazar could order one, but such studies are typically requested by members of a state’s federal delegation, park service officials said.